Bronwyn's Writing and More

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Welcome to the 2021 Series:; The Rebellious Sisterhood

Happy New Year! The Cornish Dukes are behind us and it's time to welcome in the 2021 series, the Rebellious Sisterhood. The series features three female artists looking to make a mark on the world and live life on their own terms. Book 1 features Artemisia Stansfield, a woman seeking promotion to the rank of RA (Royal Academician) at the Royal Academy of the Arts. Set in 1820, right after the death of one of the original Academy founders, Mary Moser, Artemisia struggles to overcome gender barriers despite her talent. The second book, Revealing the True Miss Stansfield, features Adelaide, Artemisia's younger sister (March 1, 2021) and the third book, A Wager to Tempt the Runaway, features an itinerant artist named osefina Ricci who is caught in a bet between Artemisia and Sir Aldred Gray (May or June 2021). The stories are set in Seasalter on the Kent coast. In this blog post I want to introduce to Seasalter as it was in 1820 when it was not much at all. It's prim...

Gool Peran! Or Happy St. Piran's Day. It's not really St. Piran's day as I write this, but a few weeks after. St Piran's Day is March 5th. I thought this week I would give us a behind the scenes look at the first meeting of Penrose and Cassian in "The Passions of Lord Trevethow." Their first meeting takes place at the St. Piran's day fair in Redruth, not far from Hayle, where Cassian's family seat is located, and of course Penrose lives in Redruth. St. Piran, himself, was a 5th century Cornish abbot, and later a saint. He was Irish, and today he is known as the patron saint of Cornwall and of tin miners (which seems to go hand in hand). In modern Cornwall, a lot of towns have their own St Piran's festivals, like Truro and Golowan, but Redruth is generally acknowledged as the home and founding place of St. Piran's day festivals. The festivals have changed little over the centuries--consisting of street fairs, fair food, vendors and entert...

The Passions of Lord Trevethow: The Hawaiian Royalty Visit Part I

Welcome to the third installment of "behind the scenes" of Lord Trevethow. One of my favorite parts of the book is the London visit of Hawaiian Royalty, which was one of the highlights of that year's Season. This gives Pen a chance to 'see the world' without leaving London, and a chance for Pen and her father to confront their fears of strangers--although in her father's case, those fears become truth which creates an interesting dilemma about moving forward despite known risks. There were excellent records of the Hawaiian King's itinerary, from the hotel he stayed at, to the daily outings that he took, complete with dates and times, guests, and even the titles of plays and operas that he took in . In some cases, there was even detail down to the hour he would be somewhere. That's always a great find! In the book, Cassian takes Penrose to the Foreign Secretary's reception and the evening is just as historically recorded. The Lifeguard band wa...

19th Century Roller Coasters

Lord Trevethow's passion--one of them at least--is to build a pleasure garden that bring experiences and the world to his small corner of Cornwall. One of the visions he shares with Penrose in the novel, is the vision of a Mountain, or a modern day roller coaster, like the ones he experienced on his travels through Russia and France (if you recall a brief reference from Unwrapping his Festive Temptation--Rosenwyn and Cador's novella, there is a mention of Marianne Treleven begging for tales of his travels and wanting to hear all about Russia). So, I thought I would share a little bit about the origins of the roller coaster here-- what would Cassian have seen and experienced? In the 16th and 17th centuries, Russians began the idea with ice slides or 'flying mountains' and sleds that crash landed into a pile of sand. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/russian-roller-coasters This article from Atlasobscura is confirmed in several other articles about the Russian M...

Book #2 The Passions of Lord Trevethow

Cassian's story is here! February has passed in a whirlwind of hard work finishing up the 4th book in the Cornish Duke's series. Now, it is time to celebrate with the release of Book #2, The Passions of Lord Trevethow. Cassian's story is complex. He's a man on a mission that is part legacy and part revenge. Still struggling to come to grips with his brother's death by misadventure, Cassian wants to make amends for his brother's errors by bringing jobs and economic diversity to Cornwall through the opening of a pleasure garden that would educate, entertain, employ and sustain the population. There's only one catch: he needs land to build it on and the man holding the land refuses to let it go to anyone outside the family. Cassian's challenge: to become family by marrying the man's reclusive daughter. But before that can happen, Cassian meets an entrancing young peasant woman at the Redruth St. Piran's Day Fair and falls madly in love. Now ...

Character inspirations for the Cornish Dukes

This week I got my revision notes back for Vennor Penlerick's story, the very last one in the dukes' series, so I will going into the writing cave shortly for a couple weeks while I tweak this finale to the series into shape. But, before I do, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the inspirations for the four heroes. It's hard to believe this time last year, the series was just beginning to take shape and now it's out there for readers! So here's how it began. Eaton Falmage , Lord Lynford (heir to the Duke of Bude). He's meant to be a regional fellow, more concerned with what he can do at home for his people than the glitter of London, and with his own secret to hide, he'd prefer to stay out of Society's eye. While he didn't physically embody Aidan Turner, he did embody some of the similar attributes of Turner's character, Ross Poldark. So, I started there for some inspiration about Eaton. Fun fact: about three months after I fin...